Whether they win or lose tonight, this has been a season-defining road trip for the Ottawa Senators.
On the front end of the nine-game stretch, it looked like the Sens might do the unthinkable and use this ridiculous run of road games to take a run at the Atlantic Division title.
Unfortunately the plague struck the locker room in the last couple weeks and in the process, slowed that momentum a little bit. But by successfully treading water over the last few weeks, the Senators remain squarely in the thick of things in the Eastern Conference. Right where they should be approaching the half-way point of the regular season.
They’ll look to end the road trip on a high note when they visit Alex DeBrincat…booooooooooo…and the suddenly surging Detroit Red Wings.
Injuries are a big part of the story heading into tonight.
In addition to the flu that has been making the rounds in the Ottawa locker room, the Senators are also going to be without Linus Ullmark, Michael Amadio, David Perron, Travis Hamonic and Jacob Bernard-Docker. Not insurmountable but certainly a hit to the team’s depth.
Max Guenette was recalled from Belleville earlier today and joins yesterday’s call-ups, Jan Jenik and Nikolas Matinpalo, on the list of guys that could draw in tonight. No Game Day skate though so we’ll have to wait until later today to find out who is in and who is out.
Something like this…
Tkachuk-Pinto-Greig
Giroux-Stützle-Batherson
Cousins-Norris-Gaudette
Reinhardt-Ostapchuk-Gregor
Sanderson-Zub
Chabot-Jensen
Kleven-Matinpalo
Anton Forsberg is expected to start.
Puck drop is scheduled for a very reasonable 7:08 PM. The game is available on TSN5, TSN1200 and on various streaming sites across the world wide web.
A closer look at this evening’s match-up via the HEAD2HEAD table.
| HEAD2HEAD |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Record | 19-17-2 (40 pts) | 17-18-4 (38 pts) |
| Goals For | 2.95 (20th) | 2.72 (25th) |
| Goals Against | 2.89 (12th) | 3.23 (25th) |
| Power Play | 24.2% (7th) | 26.3% (4th) |
| Penalty Kill | 77.8% (20th) | 69.8% (31st) |
| Shots For | 29.6 (9th) | 25.3 (32nd) |
| Shots Against | 27.3 (9th) | 29.4 (26th) |
| Leading Scorers | Stutzle-40 pts Tkachuk-37 pts Batherson-36 pts Giroux-24 pts Norris-22 pts |
Raymond-41 pts Larkin-33 pts DeBrincat-32 pts Seider-24 pts Kane-21 pts |
| Starting Goalie | Anton Forsberg 4-7-0 3.04 GAA, .885 sv% |
Alex Lyon 8-5-0 2.77 GAA, .899 sv% |
